LIVES OF STS. RUPERT (ROBERT) AND ERENDRUDA
(ERENTRAUD)

Translated by Karen Rae Keck, 1993

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTORY NOTE: HOLY AUSTRIA
Recently more and more people have come to know and to love the Orthodox
saints of the West.
We would like to introduce two such saints, Rupert of Salzburg and the nun
Erendruda, whose lives
have apparently not previously appeared in English. ("Rupert" is the
German
spelling of
"Hrodibert," rendered "Robert" in French and English.)

While the Roman provinces of Noricum and Pannonia had been strongholds of
the early church --
St. Martin of Tours,for example, was a native of Burgenland -- the
barbarian
invasions hit them
with such violence that Christianity eventually almost disappeared. The
re-introduction of the faith
was due largely to Theodo I, Duke of Bavaria in the late 600s. St. Rupert
was not the only Frankish
missionary whom Theodo brought into his territory; another, St. Emmeramus,
met a martyr's death
when, to help a distressed princess, he pretended to be the father of her
illegitimate child, thus
permitting her lover to escape the vengeance of the clan.

Although Rupert was a Frank, tradition also associates him with Ireland;
certainly the old Roman
city of Juvavia (Salzburg), which he refounded as his headquarters,
quickly
became a center of Irish
missionary activity in Central Europe. The Austrian church was pervaded
with
Celtic influence, and
was even organized on Celtic lines under "abbot-bishops" in succession
from
Rupert. The most
famous was St. Virgil the Geometer, otherwise Feargal O'Neill from
Leinster.
St. Virgil is
remembered today mostly as an astronomer who shocked his more
intellectually
staid
contemporaries by speculating about the habitibility of the Antipodes; he
was also an outstanding
Orthodox hierarch who evidently tolerated the use of the vernacular at
baptismal services and
launched, in Carinthia and Slovenia, one of the first attempts to
evangelize
the Slavs.

The Austrian Church did not long retain its free-spirited identity. Four
years after St. Virgil's passing,
the Austro-Bavarian duchy was conquered by Charlemagne and rapidly
integrated into the
European mainstream. The abbot-bishops gradually changed from spiritual
leaders into worldly
potentates, Electors of the Western Empire. By a terrible irony, the
inheritors of the mantle of St.
Virgil became the chief opponents and persecutors of Cyril and Methodius
whom he had
foreshadowed. Nevertheless, although Austria and Bavaria have not been
Orthodox for a thousand
years, the saints of the Orthodox period still live in Christ, interceding
for their countries and all
humanity. May the reader of the following Lives be saved through the
prayers
of Saints Rupert and
Erendruda!
--N. Redington